Saturday, August 11, 2007

Westgate Park City -Lies, Deceit, Discrimination and Broken Promises (part One)

Buyer Beware!

If you have been approached by a slick solicitor at a home show or fair offering a free vacation at the Westgate Park City - BEWARE!

You will be promised and guaranteed luxury accommodations for up to 4 AT the Westgate resort for the bargain price of $25 for one night or $50 for two. In exchange you must spend 90 minutes touring the resort. It all sounds good up until this point, but the cliche "if a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is" certainly applies here.

Upon making your reservations, you will be emailed a confirmation letter with a check in date, time and room type - 1BR which sleeps 4.

Here is where the scheme gets ugly. After driving for hours with your family to take a nice getaway, you view the presentation, thus fulfilling your end of the bargain. At the end of the tour, your salesman sends you to the gifting center to receive your "gift." Quite often, the nice girls in the gifting department inform you "we are in an overbooked situation and there are no rooms available. We can pay you $100 or you may come back at a later date."

During our August 9, 2007 visit, there were five families in the same situation that we spoke to. Families who had driven for up to 6 hours from as far away as St. George, UT who were now told the vacation they were really promised is not available as "our owners have priority." If you don't buy, you don't stay is the sad reality.

That is all for now, but be sure to check back as the Manager eventually Physically assaulted and threw out one of the complainants....

In the meantime, be sure the to read LookSmart's" FindArticles - Readers tell good, bad and ugly of timeshares
Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Nov 26, 2006, by Lee Davidson Deseret Morning News

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

These guys are crooks and need to be shut down. We drove all the way to Park City to see their time shares, only to be told they were oversold AFTER we had wasted nearly two hours.

We had confirmed reservations and had invited other family members to join us in the great deal. What an embarrassment when we found out there were no rooms.

Anonymous said...

We just had the old bait and switch trick done to us at Westgate Park City. There were plenty of rooms at Westgate, but because we chose not to buy after 2.5 hours of sales pressure, so we were shuttled off to a one bed room at Sundial with no working pool or room service. We were told there was no room at Westgate for weeks to come. Funny thing is when I called on my cell pretending to be an out of town visitor needing a place for the next couple of days, and needing to book a 2 bed room, they had plenty of openings.

Valley said...

We definitely feel your pain. Please check back often as we will soon have an email sign up list that will notify you of updates. I own three timeshares and have seen presentations all over the US and Mexico, and have never experienced anything like the lies and deception of the Park City Westgate. We must warn everyone so innocent vacationers from St. George don't end up driving for hours to be told there is no room at the inn.

Anonymous said...

WARNING: WESTGATE PARK CITY IS A SCAM!

We sat through a 2 hour high pressure sales pitch at the Westgate Park City Resort & Spa last week. At the end we were told the price for a 900 square foot 1 bedroom unit was $38,000 (that's with a special "today only" 5% discount). For that we were guaranteed 8 days and 7 nights usage BUT we couldn't be guaranteed what week we could use it but that the 1st week in March wasn't their busy time so that "shouldn't be a problem." However, the fine print at the bottom of the page said week 9 (the first week in March) would cost an extra $10,000 and that weeks 51 and 52 an extra $20,000. So 49 x $38,000 + 1 x $48,000 + 2 x $58,000 means Westgate will collect $2,026,0000 for a 900 square foot apartment which works out to $2251/square foot or about double what Westgate owner David Seigel's house (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_0WUm_WBoo)
reportedly will cost.

Run, don't walk, away from this.

Anonymous said...

BOUGHT AFTER MARKET. GOT A DEAL. THE SLICK SELL IS A SCAM. ONCE YOU OWN, AND PROVIDING YOU WILL USE IT, IT'S GOOD.

HATE THE HARD SELL. DO NOT SELL OUT FOR THEIR PROMISED 'FREE STUFF', IT'S SHIT. I GOT MY TWO BEDROOM AFTERMARKET FOR 1/2 OF THE 'ONE DAY ONLY SPECIAL'.

I AM NOT A REAL ESTATE AGENT. I OWN ONE WEEK A YEAR. I HAVE THREE KIDS. THE WHOLE OF THE CANYONS IS A TIME SHARE SCAM FILLED WITH TIME SHARE SCAM ARTISTS, BUT, THE PROPERTY IS NICE, THE SERVICE, IN THE LAST TWO SEASONS, HAS BEEN GOOD. THE SKIING IS GREAT. THE POOL AND FACILITIES ARE NICE AND THE MAID SERVICE GOOD. THE RESTAURANT IS GOOD.

Anonymous said...

I bought with Westgate in Orlando back in April of 2008. I am pleased with what I got. To me, it doesn't matter where you buy your timeshare with Westgate. I was offered something for around $20K. I shot the m down. Then something around $15K. I shot them down again. I was going to walk but they offered me a biannual for $7,500. So I have a week every two years. I bought at a less popular resort they own but I can pay $125 and exchange to the same resort others pay $20k+ for. On my off years if I want to vacation, I have a membership with Interval International and can get a nice place for like $$300-$400 for the week. I also got a two year membership with Ice Platinum. So I can get the deals still. Just be careful of what you buy and what you're paying. At first they were trying to hit me with 4 and change a month. I was like "No, no." My cost is under $150 per month. I am satisfied. I don't feel scammed. I won!!!

Anonymous said...

Anonymous, don't feel satisfied that you won!!! You'll never win with Westgate, you just wait till you try to use Interval and don't be surprised when they have very little to offer you, i'm sure at the sales pitch you were promised the earth, trust me, it won't materialise. You have been warned. I'm a u.k owner and desperately want rid of mine, if you'd have checked sellers websites before you bought you could have had mine for free. Westgate are scummy lying bastards.

Anonymous said...

Hello everyone,

I was recently suckered into a sales presentation by the Westgate Resorts group, so I thought I’d take this time to share my experience. It was Thanksgiving, and I was looking on the internet for a hotel to stay in while I visited friends. I found a good rate and called what I though was the hotel. Someone from Westgate answered. They told me if I were to sit through a 90 minute presentation, I could get ½ off the price of the hotel. It sounded worth it, because I knew I wouldn’t buy whatever they were selling, so I agreed. I was going with some friends, so they agreed too. The guy on the phone stated we had to make 50 K a year to qualify. When I told him that one of my buddies didn’t quite make this amount, the guy on the phone said I should just lie about it. This was the first sign of things to come!

When I got there for the presentation, I could tell right away that this was a joke. They quoted every used-car-salesmen line in the book. The entire presentation and subsequent tour of the facility reeked of a farce. It was actually quite impressive though; the way in which they set it all up. There was literally an auditorium full of about 50 sales people trying to make their pitches to groups of unsuspecting travelers. They had food set up, golf carts lined up for the tours, the whole nine yards. It was like an assembly line; and as soon as our group left, a whole new team of travelers walked in to meet pre-determined their sales person (cleverly matched on ethnicity and race).

But back to the sales presentation…..again, the entire thing was laughable. Their numbers didn’t add up, the tactics were ridiculously over the top, and the rooms were so tacky that they almost looked fake. Any question I asked received a scripted, almost rehearsed answer. After saying no about 5 times, they brought another sales person to try and close, but to no avail. The original asking price for the unit they were trying to sell me was somewhere in the 25-30 K range. By the end of our 90 minute presentation that lasted 3 hours, the number had dropped to $7500. INSANE!!!!!!

After reading some of the complaints of people on this website, I really don’t know what to say. The fact that anyone could fall for this deal is incomprehensible. What about this seemed like a good idea? I don’t want to lay all the blame on the people however. In my opinion, Westgate shoulders most of the blame. I don’t know how anyone could work for such a company; I don’t know how these people sleep at night. Their usage of high pressure sales tactics should be illegal.

So needless to say, DON’T BUY A TIMESHARE FROM WESTGATE, IT IS A COMPLETE AND UTTER R-I-P-O-F-F!!!!!!!!

Nathan Wilson said...

I am planning on filing a lawsuit for deceitful claims. You know what they are if you are an owner. They refuse to buy back the timeshare so I am filing a lawsuit in the next week. We'll see what happens.

tracey said...

Westgate Resorts are LIARS and CHEATS. We bought under the assumption we could have a weeks holiday every other year anywhere in the world. Not realizing there were all the added extras of banking fees, exchange fees and increasing maintenance fees. We found out quickly that it was near impossible to get the exchange we wanted. Unfortunately we did an upgrade, being told that it would make it easier to get the exchange we wanted. Here's where the BAIT and SWITCH occurred, we somehow went from having a full week to now only having 4 days (weekends not included) and can no longer exchange at all!! I want to make it a must to warn as many people as possible before it's too late. Please email if you have any ideas. traceybrowning5424@hotmail.com

larry said...

I was told that I don't qualify because I am single after having paid them $20. They said they would give me a refund if I mail the paperwork back to them. A scam for sure.

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Anonymous said...

Boo hoo. Your long drive was probably 45 min because the home show was in salt lake. I don't work for Westgate but a compedetor in park city actually and it is always the same. People come up for a free anything, hear only what they want and when it doesn't turn out the way they wanted it, not the way it was told to them directly they get on the internet and complain. Buy your own dinner next time or pay for your own accommodations and don't be a cheap little Utah family that most likely doesn't even tip at restaurants and stop trying to get free things and you'll be happier.

Anonymous said...

Also, if you read the 7th comment down, he states it's a scam because at first they tried to,get 30k then it went all the way down to 7500. What a scam? Those are different units. The 7500 is NOT for the same unit as the more expensive unit. It also means you can't come up every year. It makes my point. People hear exactly what they want and then when they get pissed because they didn't get it their way, they post a negative comment. Pathetic to me.

avabutler|mexican timeshare solutions said...

You are a victim of timeshare scam in Mexico if you were told these statements at a sales presentation:

"...our timeshare is a good financial investment."
"...you can rent yourtimeshare weeks and make a profit."
"...you can sell yourtimeshare anytime and make a profit."
"...XYC company will buy your old timeshare for a considerable amount of money."
"...our timeshare offers you exceptional benefits and discounts for airfare, car rental, cruises, hotels or tours."
"...our timeshare offers tax advantages."
"...our timeshare is a deeded or like a deeded property (perpetuity)."
"...please, sign this waiver rescinding your right to cancel your timeshare within the 5 day recsission period as we are activating your timeshare today."

Anonymous said...

Unknown GO TO HELL